


Women's Work

by Tinwoman



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Advanced Robot Fucking, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gen, Lost Sons changed to Lost Daughters, Mildly Dubious Consent, Un-Fridged Wives, Vignette Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-11-29 03:30:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11432244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tinwoman/pseuds/Tinwoman
Summary: Lucy Diaz, Barbara (a.k.a Bishop, a.k.a B3-47), Jenny Lands, and Sarah Kellogg: all alive and kickin’, telling their own stories, fighting and fucking up and navigating the Commonwealth alongside the Sole Survivor.OrIn which I angrily resurrect all the Dead Wives and give them their husbands’ narratives: Lucia the Sad Sniper Mom, Bishop the Wisecracking Railroad Agent, Jenny Lands the Noir Synth Detective, and Sarah Kellogg the Dangerous Mercenary.





	1. Lucia Diaz

**Author's Note:**

> Also I turned all the Lost Sons into Lost Daughters, just to really lean into the theme.

_you and what army_

 

I.

It’s bright and cool, the day Lucy leaves Little Lamplight for good. Dirt and dust are kicking up with every step she takes, the wind at her back and the sun on her face. Tightening the straps on her pack, Lucy hoists it higher on her shoulders and squints nervously into the distance, feeling more exposed and alone than she ever has in her whole life. The sky swerves above her, stretching all around and leaving her as tiny and vulnerable as the lost child she swore she left behind years ago. It is, Lucy thinks uneasily, like being born all over again. She’s blind, deaf, helpless out here on her own, and for a moment the urge to run back inside, to beg to be the exception, washes over her like warm, sickly shame.

She should head for Big Town. That’s where all the kids say to go — once you’re out, head to Big Town and you and the rest of the Mungos can live there and do whatever it is Mungos do. The specifics of the last part has always been a little fuzzy to the residents of Little Lamplight; what Mungos _do_. Sex, certainly — the oldest at Little Lamplight would smugly whisper to each other about _that_ particular aspect of adulthood, giggle-snorting behind their hands, half disgusted half desperately intrigued — but other things, too. Money and work and violence and...Lucy doesn’t really know.

All she knows right now is she wants Robert. She can’t see any further than that.

He left a few months ago, walked out brave and alone with everything he owned on his back. Well, “owns” isn’t exactly the right word, but there’s some things about Little Lamplight that don’t quite fit, that don’t slot neatly into language anyone from anywhere else would understand.

Reaching back, she twists her long dark hair into a knot at the base of her neck, getting it off her shoulders and away from her face, and tries hard not to keep scanning the horizon for a familiar silhouette. Robert said...he _said_...but that was so long ago. He said he’d wait, but who knows what happened to him out here. He could be dead. He could have forgotten. He could have decided not to come back for her, for a million good reasons or a million shitty ones.

Lucy grits her teeth against that the sour taste flooding her mouth. Her back left tooth has been aching lately; she needs to lay off the Nuka Colas, needs to start taking better care of her body, needs to twist herself into a new, solitary, self-sufficient version of Lucia that can handle whatever the Wasteland throws at her. Shining and impenetrable, a closed circuit with everything she needs in the palm of her hands.

The clouds blow over the sun, and Lucy tries not to jump at the sudden, shocking shift of light and shadow. It’s bizarre, having that _nothing_ , that utter lack of anything, looming above her all the time. She took guard shifts outside before like everyone in Little Lamplight, but she was always on high alert then. _I can’t keep that up for the rest of my life._ The thought of so much weather shifting and swirling around her, tossing her around like a ragdoll, makes her skin tighten and sting.

 _Get a grip_. She needs to keep going. She can’t stop, can’t slow down, can’t even turn around; Little Lamplight is tugging at her, the riptide of everything she’s ever known fighting her every step of the way. Lucy knows, knows as deeply as she’s ever known anything, that if she turns around she’ll crumble. She’ll be dragged back, will drift helplessly into the magnetized orbit of _home_.

And then — and _then_ —

“Lucy! Luce!”

A figure, approaching fast from the distance, waving an arm wildly, joyfully. All her breath leaves her at once, punching out of her lungs like a gasp, and everything around her snaps into clear, sharp focus.

_Robert._

“Here! I’m here,” she shouts, throwing all caution to the wind, sprinting across the uneven ground until she nearly collides with him, pressing her face against his neck.

Robert wraps his arms around her, lifting her off her feet and twirling her around and around, laughing the whole time. Lucy feels lighter than air, like she could fly, like she’s invincible.

“You came back. You waited for me. I wasn’t sure if you’d -, but you came _back_ ,” she’s babbling, she knows she is, but she can’t stop the words pouring out of her mouth.

“Told you I would,” Robert says, setting her down and looking at her like she was perfect, like she was the only thing he ever wanted, and she has to blink hard to hold back the tears that are suddenly prickling at the corners of her eyes.

“Yeah well, it’s been a while,” Lucy says, sniffling and scrubbing at her face. “You — you grew a beard!”

He laughs and rubs the scruff on his face, his eyes just as quick and sharp as she remembered, and Lucy’s breath catches in her throat with the _love_ she feels in that moment. “Had to; makes me look older. Helps with things out here.”

“Older,” she breathes, wide-eyed. He looked old to her already, looked more different than she’d expected. How much older could he _look_?

“Yeah,” he grins, and squeezes her arm. “It’s...well, you’ll see. C’mon — Big Town’s a pit, but I found someplace else for now.”

“Okay,” she says, and the tether to Little Lamplight snaps and breaks, her heart singing _home home home home_.

 

II.

When Winlock and Barnes slink out of the Third Rail, Lucy knows she’s running out of time. Not many people have quit the Gunners to go out on their own, and even fewer survive a friendly chat like the one she just had. They’ll be tracking her for sure after this, making it harder and harder for to do anything other than come crawling back to them, belly down and face in the dirt.

And she will. If it comes to it she’ll do whatever she has to, to get the cure for Daniella. She’ll hate every moment of it, but if it’s the only way...if it’s really the only way....

Lucy sits on the cracked plastic seat, the candy-colored lights starting to swirl unsteadily. Takes a deep breath and calculates again how many caps she’s got, working through each debt and favor. She’s short. She’s still way, way too short to pay off what she owes. A frantic, barely-suppressed thrumming stars pounding in her blood — _run run run Lucy, run and don’t stop don’t turn around._

She can’t stay here, but she’s got nowhere else to go.

Pulling out a cigarette, Lucy inhales deeply. The smoke in her lungs is warm and comforting — she knows it’s bad for her, but she does it anyway. She doesn’t have the crutch Robert had, with the facial hair and the sharp snap in his voice and the stature (and yeah, by now she knows he was short compared to most people out here, but he'd been taller than her). She needs the cigarettes, needs the huge sniper rifle on her tiny back, needs every ounce of fire in her blood to get people to pay attention and take her seriously.

She’d thought running with the Gunners would solve all that. Tough and badass and a _pack_ , somewhere she could find safety and maybe even camaraderie. Nothing like what she she had with Robert, of course, but close to what she had in Little Lamplight at least.

Christ, she was an idiot.

“You alright in here, Diaz?”

Hancock saunters in, tricorner hat jauntily askew and looking casual and relaxed and just so fuckin’ cool that Lucy bites back a weird surge of childish, irrational jealousy. _I could never pull that off. I’d look like a kid playing dress up, but somehow he looks like a kickass rebel_. Self-consciously she tugs on the brim of Robert’s cap, pulling it lower over her eyes and trying desperately to match Hancock’s carelessly intimidating body language, sprawling a little more on the bench then she would if she was alone.

“I’m fine. Just a couple of Gunner pricks tryin’ to shake me down,” she says, taking another drag of her cigarette.

“You want me to take care of ‘em?” Hancock asks, leaning against the wall opposite her, his black eyes gleaming like coals in the neon lights, unfathomable and alien. Lucy shivers, just a little.

“Nah,” Lucy says automatically, reflexively, quick as she can so she won’t have time to think. It’s not the first time someone’s offered her a handout, but she can’t take it this time either. She won’t. She’d rather sell her soul to the devil than chain herself and Daniella to someone else’s mercy. Even a friend. _Especially_ a friend.

Hancock smiles, small and crunchy across his ravaged face, and for a second he looks almost sad. _He’s already doing more than enough for me, letting me stay here_ , Lucy tells herself firmly, leashing back the secret part of her that leaps like a starving puppy at any hint of kindness or tenderness.

“Whatever you say, kid,” Hancock says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Though you’d be doing me a favor, givin’ me an excuse to go after ‘em. They don’t have the right vibe for this establishment, you feel me?”

Lucy laughs, short and unexpected, and grins back at him. “Yeah. They’re total lightweights anyway — wouldn’t even be worth Ham’s time to kick the shit out of them.”

“Really?” Hancock says, delighted and a little vicious, and Lucy feels that thrill of a circle closing around you and someone else, keeping everyone else out. The in-group. The chosen few. Comforting and mean and sweeter than bubblegum.

“Totally,” Lucy confirms, dropping her cigarette on the floor and grinding it under her heel.

“You lemme know if you ever wanna see them more than hilariously wasted after a few,” Hancock says, still sharp-toothed and deadly and smiling.

Lucy doesn’t answer, turns away and bites her lip so hard she nearly draws blood, and Hancock lets out a quiet, defeated sigh.

“Fine, fine,” he says, and Lucy forgives him with a peeking glance from under her bangs. “Just. You don’t have to fight the whole damn world on your own, you know.”

The smoke drifts between them, obscuring Hancock slightly, blurring him into something entirely different. A historical artifact, a visitor, wholly divorced from any reality that Lucy would call home. Charismatic and brave, inspiring, giving his life to The People in a completely, ludicrously abstract way that Lucy finds as admirable as it is mystifying.

Lucy closes her eyes and remembers the weight and feel of Daniella in her arms, remembers Robert’s voice cracking as he told them both to _run_. She owes them everything she’s got — there’s no room for anyone else. Hancock doesn’t understand at all.

“My money’s still on me in that fight,” Lucy says, and Hancock chuckles softly.

But before he can say anything else, before either of them can grab a beer or light another cigarette or try once again to meet in the middle of their vastly different lives, a woman appears in the doorway.

“Hey, you’re Diaz, right? Lucy Diaz?”

“Who’s asking?” Lucy stands slowly, and out of the corner of her eye she sees Hancock slide his frock coat aside to place a hand on his shotgun, gentle as a lover.

“My name is Anne Foster, and if you’ve got the availability I’d like to hire you for a job. Word around town is you’re looking for work, and can handle yourself well.” Her voice is quick, clipped in a way that Lucy associates with doctors and hardline shopkeepers. Lucy guesses she’s about forty years old, decked out in one of those black Brotherhood jumpsuits. Her dark blonde hair is pinned back in a neat, no-nonsense bun and the cleanest pair of glasses Lucy’s ever seen is perched firmly on her nose.

Hancock looks her over, and shrugs with a crinkle of his forehead as if to say ‘your problem if you want it’.

_Can’t be worse than any of my other options right now._

“You got the caps, you got me,” Lucy says.

 

III.

“Hold on tight, Diaz.”

Anne’s voice is barely audible over the whir and rumble of the vertibird’s blades, and Lucy grips the edges of her seat harder. The two of them are crammed together on the seats of a genuine Brotherhood of Steel transport, and Lucy’s about to get her first glimpse at the inner workings of that ridiculously huge airship that’s been lurking above the Commonwealth for months. Lucy holds her breath as the vertibird takes off, her heart thudding like a hammer against her ribs.

Despite her discomfort, Lucy is itching to get a bead on what Anne does up here. There’s a question that’s been lurking at the back of her mind ever since she started traveling with Anne, something that has felt _off_ for weeks and sends a shivering warning crawling up her spine whenever she thinks about it.

Why would a Brotherhood soldier be looking for an extra gun? Lucy still can’t figure it out.

Brotherhood types usually have whole squadrons of people to back them up, usually have the best weapons and ammo and information, and Anne is high up enough that she’d have her pick of the recruits. The two of them haven’t even been doing anything that shady, or at least nothing that she couldn’t have brought some beefy meat-n-metal shield with her for.

 _Maybe Anne isn’t as committed to the Brotherhood cause as she seems_ , Lucy thinks, willing herself to ignore the shuddering of the engine behind her. Lucy’s seen it — there’s something else buried under that military-grim frown that seems almost permanently fixed to Anne’s face. It’s never when Lucy expects it, but every now and then something shines through her armor, a smile or a joke or the dark pulse of repressed rage. 

Anne damn near blew up an entire military base to kill the Institute tool who kidnapped her daughter. Kellogg was a smear on the ground by the time Anne was finished with her, and Lucy had to practically drag Anne out the door afterward to keep her from pounding the merc into paste; Lucy’s pretty sure _that_ hadn't been standard military protocol.

The vertibird jerks suddenly to the left, and Lucy’s teeth clack together so hard she feels the vibrations crawl up her skull. _This is the worst._ Lucy doesn’t mind heights usually — she’s got not problem crawling around on a rooftop or lying on a high outcropping to get a better shot — but all this swaying and shaking has her swallowing convulsively to fight off impending nausea.

Finally they stabilize, and with a satisfying clang they’re locked into place. Lucy tries not to look too eager when she scrambles out onto the catwalk, breathing sharp and shallow, the damp breeze a welcome caress on her skin. Anne hops out after her and unexpectedly reaches for her, wrapping a hand just above Lucy’s elbow and keeping her close.

“What’s up?” Lucy says quietly, instinctively tilting her head so that her mouth was close to Anne’s ear. She knows she’s safe here as long as she’s with Anne, that there’s no real reason to be whispering and sneaking like they’re in hostile territory, but Lucy’s instincts are screaming at her to stay alert and wary.

“I need to debrief with the Elder, and it might take a while. If you need to offload anything there’s an armory that’ll buy anything useful, and tell them to put anything you want on my tab.”

“Okayyy,” Lucy stretches out the last syllable, turning it into a question, and Anne purses her lips warningly.

“Don’t get cute up here,” Anne warns, and Lucy restrains herself from rolling her eyes. “They like it even less than I do.”

“Then why am I here, if I’m such a smartass liability?” Lucy says, and this time Anne raises an eyebrow and the corner of her mouth twitches.

“Because you’re the best shot in the Commonwealth, and as much as I like having you all to myself, you’re a valuable asset. If you’re a known quantity around here, you’ll have a better chance at getting more work.”

“I’m not joining —”

“I know, I know,” Anne cuts her off, releasing her at the same time. “You’ll never enlist. But the Brotherhood is always looking for freelancers. Anyone here would be lucky to hire you, and they can pay you for that luck.”

Lucy stares at her. “I...jeez, thanks. But...uhhh, are you planning on...I mean, I think we’ve got a good thing going right now, don’t we?” Curses the catch in her voice, in the sudden, panicky feeling racing down her arms to the tips of her fingers. One more person leaving her behind, one more person going where she can’t follow.

“We do. But I have…” Anne hesitates, then lets out a quick, hard breath. “I have things I need to finish. Somewhere I need to go. And I don’t know what’s going to happen, and...and I want you be okay, if I don’t...if I can’t, come back.”

 _Suicide mission_ , Lucy thinks bitterly, but she stays silent. It’s not unheard of, for these soldier types. Getting chucked into situations with no way out, locked into a fight they can’t win. It makes Lucy’s skin crawl, makes her want to jump back into that vertibird and take Anne with her, run away as far as they both could get.

Lucy always thought Anne was too smart for that bullshit. _Guess not._

“Okay,” Lucy says finally, forcing a grin and hooking her thumbs in the belt loops of her pants. “I’ll go make nice with your Brotherhood pals while you talk with the boss, but let’s hold off on the You Disappearing Plans til it actually happens, okay?”

Before Anne can react Lucy turns on her heel and walks away, ignoring Anne’s annoyed “that defeats the purpose of a _plan_ , Diaz”. Anne catches up to her, frowning, but doesn’t press the point. Lucy lets herself be dropped off at the armory, trying to downplay how impressed she is by the sheer _size_ of everything up here, from the guns to the people.

And Lucy talks shop with the rank and file, Lucy chit chats with the scribes and tells a few dirty jokes, Lucy has a Nuka Cola in the commissary and unloads some ammo that she’s been carting around. It’s fine. It’s easy, actually. Lucy knows a lot more about guns, sniper tactics, and the price of .308s than she does about most things, and that’s all anyone here seems to want to talk about.

Well. That and the Ghoul Menace. And the Synth Menace. And the Supermutant Menace.

She’s not surprised, exactly — the Brotherhood isn’t known for their kind and gentle nature — but there’s an electric, dangerous undercurrent in this place that Lucy’s never felt before. These soldiers, these people. They _mean_ it, when they toss off comments about wiping every ghoul out before they go feral. There’s sharp teeth behind those friendly smiles, and their eyes are shining with pure, fanatic zeal.

What does it say about Anne, that she signed up with these true believer nut-jobs? _What does it say about you that you signed up with Anne_ , Lucy thinks uncomfortably, and hopes Anne will be done soon so they can get out of here; Lucy’s already yearning to have her feet back on firm, solid ground. 

 

IV.

There’s a certain energy in Diamond City, the lights and the sounds and the people hustling around each other, that reminds Lucy of Little Lamplight. She prefers Goodneighbor — the dirty looks she gets here are enough to set her teeth on edge — but Diamond City feels like Little Lamplight expanded outward, grown up, homey in a way that never fails to comfort her.

 _It’s probably the kids_ , she thinks wryly, slurping up another mouthful of noodles. _Not exactly rocket science, Diaz._ Diamond City’s just about the only place in the Commonwealth that has so many children darting around and yelling and playing their secret kid games. They run in tribes, in separate groups that form and disband and reform in new configurations every day, and sometimes when she watches them she misses Little Lamplight so much it’s like a physical ache in her chest.

She knows no one gets to go home again, she _knows_ that, but for Lucy that door is barred tighter than a Vault.

“So Blue’s got you on standby tonight, huh?”

Lucy looks up to see Piper sliding into a seat next to her, ordering a bowl of noodles for herself with a single gesture. Lucy grins; Piper’s always good for a laugh, and tonight Lucy’s straying dangerously close to maudlin.

“Yeah,” Lucy says. “Got a few days off, thought I’d see if I can pick up any day jobs. How’s Nat?”

Piper lights up, her smile bright in the reflected neon lights, and Lucy’s cheeks flush slightly with heat.

“She’s good — she’s tearing around here somewhere with her pals, probably up to no good. I swear I’m gonna be completely grey by the time I’m thirty,” Piper says happily. She always likes talking about Nat, about what a firebrand troublemaker her sister is, and for a moment Lucy is gripped with a jealousy and longing so intense her breath catches in her throat.

_Daniella is still far, far away. Daniella might already be dead. Daniella’s life is in my hands, and I’m sitting here getting distracted by a pretty smile and spending caps I don’t have on fucking noodles._

With a start, Lucy realizes Piper’s gone silent, is looking at her with open, naked concern. Lucy forces herself to crack a smile and polishes off the last of her food before taking a sip of beer.

“Sorry — lost in thought,” Lucy says, aiming for offhand and casual, for whatever will get that _look_ of Piper’s face, because right now she’s too brittle to handle Piper’s effusive, overwhelming, sticky-sweet kindness. Right now she’s looking for a wicked joke or a quick fuck or a rare indulgence in something harder than cigarettes or alcohol.

“No problem,” Piper says, looking cheerful and casual again so quickly Lucy’s sure she’s snapped a mask of her own back in place. “Oh damnit — I just remembered I’ve gotta run to Fallon’s Basement to pick something up for Nat before it closes. Wanna be a pal and finish this for me?”

“Wait, what?” Lucy says, but Piper’s in full steamroll mode and is already hopping off the barstool and pushing the bowl toward her.

“Great, thanks! Or just leave it, if you don’t want it. See you around, lemme know if you wanna grab a proper drink sometime, bye!”

And before Lucy can do more than blink, Piper’s disappeared into the crowds with a cheery wave and swirl of her red trench coat. Laughing a little despite herself, Lucy pauses for the barest moment before pulling Piper’s discarded dinner toward her; beggars can’t be choosers, no point in letting good food go to waste, a free meal is hard to find, all that good stuff. No point in being embarrassed — better to be full and embarrassed than prideful and hungry.

_Right? Right._

Sometimes, though, Lucy wonders if the whole damn world can smell the hunger on her. Gnawing at her constantly, rumbling behind every word, every shot from her rifle, every slick-mouthed kiss. She could suck the entire world down to the marrow, grease and blood dripping off her chin, and still not be satisfied.

There are empty places in her that will never be filled. Not really. Not until Daniella is back in her arms, maybe not until Daniella is grown and _alive_ and happy and safe; maybe only then could she can finally lay down her weapons and rest. For now she’s gotta keep moving. For now she can’t get sidetracked, has to keep her head clear and her heart empty, has to hack the whole world apart if that’s what it takes.

Lucy finishes her dinner in silence, alone at the counter, the sole still point in the rush of the crowds.

 

V.

Lucy rubs her thumb reflexively over the crumpled piece of paper in her hand, careful not to smudge the writing. Daisy left her specific instructions, gave her the exact date, time and place that Daniella’s caravan would meet her. Lucy has already triple-checked everything for accuracy, has cleared the place out herself of anything that might cause trouble, pestered Daisy for any scrap of additional info til Daisy threatened to bar her from the shop.

Nothing to do now but wait.

Resisting the urge to pace, Lucy rocks backwards on her heels and shoves the paper back in her pocket. The road is empty before her, twisting down and away, and as the wind picks up and starts to swirl around her she closes her eyes for just a moment.

She’s been left waiting before; she can wait a little longer yet. Anne warned her, before she disappeared to do God-knows-what with God-knows-who, that she wouldn’t be able to use Brotherhood transports like she’d originally planned. Lucy had been curious, had been even more curious about the new merc Anne had been running with lately, but she didn’t dare ask.

Lucy likes Anne well enough, more importantly will owe Anne til the end of her days for all she’s done, but despite her even temperament and hatched-faced stoicism the woman attracts trouble like a fly to mutfruit. Lucy’s more than happy to give whatever shit she’s stirred up a pass; she doesn’t know Anne’s been swept up in, and she doesn’t want to know.

All that matters now is that Daniella is almost home. She doesn’t have space for anything else.

She’s got plans, for the part that comes next. She made a fortune running with Anne; nearly got her head blown off a few times for her trouble and collected a few more impressive scars to boot, but escaped with her skin each time. Now she finally has enough to buy a tiny flat in Diamond City, tucked back near the Wall — barely more than three rooms, but to Lucy it’s almost unbearably luxurious. Daniella will have friends, real friends, will go to school and have a chance at a normal life.

Lucy opens her eyes into the stinging wind and tries to remember the feel of Robert’s hand in hers, the callouses on his fingers and the ragged edges of his fingernails. They had such hope, once. They’d been _happy_ , so completely happy that Lucy thought that alone would keep them all safe. Lucy thought love would shield them all, and a wave of grief and homesickness for the life they could’ve had, barely glimpsed before it slipped through her fingers, rises in her like the tides of the sea.

 _I love you_ , she thinks, closing her hand into a loose fist. The memories of his voice, of the smell of his skin and the press of his body, are already fading. _I love you so much, and I’m going to take care of Daniella. We saved her, you know. You saved her that night in the tunnels, and I saved her from the disease that wrapped itself around her bones. We did it. I just wish you were here with me, even if just for this moment. I wish you could see her, one more time._

A shadow on the horizon, and Lucy’s heart leaps into her throat. She tells herself to be steady, to stay calm, but as the shape grows larger on the horizon she _knows_. She knows in that secret, fragile part of her soul she thought was dead forever.

It’s her.

And Lucy runs. Lucy runs toward the caravan, tears blurring her vision, and when she hears the sweet, piping voice calling “Mom?” the joy and relief in her expand outward, shining like a physical light, like a fire that doesn’t destroy or consume but banishes the darkness, and when she lifts Daniella in her arms and spins her around and around she knows with a startling clarity that this will be the happiest moment of her whole life.

“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here,” she says. Daniella just hugs her tighter, and Lucy doesn't let go.


	2. Barbara / B3-47 / Bishop

_give and take (mostly take)_

 

I.

The sun is setting, orange light streaming in through the windows and striping deep, long shadows across the floorboards, pooling around Barbara like warm honey. She’s sitting on the overstuffed green armchair in her living room, staring out the window with her hands folded neatly in her lap. She hasn’t moved a muscle in…she’s not sure. Not for a while. She’s been losing track of time lately, staring into space, standing so still that when she comes back to herself her calves are aching with strain, pain sparking along the nerves in her feet and ankles. Whole days have slipped away from her since…since John…

She takes a slow, steady breath, but the air is thin and useless in her lungs. Everything’s different now that John is gone, ripped away from her in the middle of the night by monsters so violent and terrifying that she still sees them when she closes her eyes, shimmering in the darkness behind her eyelids. Fire and blood and that _rope_ , the rope they wrapped around John’s neck and dragged him away while Barbara _screamed_ and struggled in the iron-boned grip of a man who whispered ‘him first, then you’ in her ear.

And then she killed him. She doesn’t know how, she didn’t even feel like herself, strength and rage pouring out from a hidden wellspring deep within her, but somehow she killed every last one of them.

It didn’t matter, though. She was too late. John was dead by the time she cut him down, and now she’ll never see him again; that scruff of ginger on his chin in the morning, his slow smile, the rumble and drawl of his curious accent — all buried with him in the backyard, under his favorite tree. And the raw ache in her chest sharpens to a knife edge, cutting her to ribbons, gutting her from the inside out, because she’s the reason he’s dead. It’s her fault, and hey, drowning in grief for her husband is better than burning alive in inferno that ignited and left her standing in the ashes of her old life.

It’s impossible. It’s _impossible_. She can’t be a synth. But she is.

A sudden, sharp knock on the door echoes through the house, bouncing off walls in a way Barbara never noticed before. _Was it always this empty in here? Was John the only one who ever filled the space? Maybe I’m not a synth — maybe I’m a ghost._

Another knock, in a specific four-beat pattern, and Barbara stands abruptly. The signal. After the attack, she’d gotten a two letters — a coded message, and the cipher to break it.

_‘Stay where you are. Wait for our agent to knock three times, then four times. We will keep you safe. — A friend’_

It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous. But she doesn’t want to leave, and she doesn’t want to stay; she wants to vanish completely. Maybe this is her ticket to that.

When she opens the door, the woman on the other side — tall, dark-skinned and white-haired, radiating the easy confidence of a soldier or a merc — ducks her head with a small smile and quickly lets herself in, walking past Barbara in two long strides and closes the door behind her.

“I’m Glory,” she says, turning to face Barbara fully. “I’m with the Railroad.”

Barbara had figured. “Right. Of course you are. Cause I’m…”

A pause, stretching between them like chasm, like an impassable gulf.

“Yeah. Yeah, you are,” Glory says softly, sympathetically, and Barbara had thought she’d be prepared, had thought she’d made some sort of peace with it, but at Glory’s words her throat goes tight and thick, her vision sliding out of focus, blood rushing in her ears.

“Here, sit,” Glory says, grabbing her lightly by the shoulders and guiding her back to the green chair.

She slumps down, breathing sharp and shallow, willing herself to get a grip. She glances up at Glory, murmuring soothingly above her; beautiful and strong, like she could rip the universe in two with her bare hands, and Barbara — B3-47, she knows now — feels so empty next to her that she could just lay down and die.

“You okay?” Glory asks in a soft, low voice, and B3-47 nods shakily. She _is_ okay. She is. “I actually…this always a bit strange for me, but I know you. We’ve met before.”

B3-47 raises an eyebrow. “I, uh. I think I’d remember you.”

She’s expecting a grin but Glory doesn’t smile, her eyes flickering with an expression B3-47 can’t catch.

“We wiped your memory. It’s standard procedure for a rescued synth,” Glory continues. “About three years ago, we pulled you from the Institute, and you picked the…the memories, the story, that you wanted to have.”

B3-47 focuses on her breathing, loud and hoarse in her ears. It sounds wrong, it sounds _insane_ …but it doesn’t, at the same time. It feels right. Her memories of John, of Bunker Hill, are so much stronger than the hazy memories of when she lived in Quincy with her father and sister. She’d thought she was just getting older. She’d thought it was normal; well, it is normal. Normal for synths who went through memory reconstruction.

Blinking hard, B3-47 forces herself back to the present, zoning in on Glory’s voice to ground her.

“We — the Railroad — kept an eye on you for a while. Made sure everything was okay, that you were integrating, but. But after a few years we couldn’t spare the resources,” Glory finishes, tar-black bitterness and regret dripping in her voice.

Glory is sorry, B3-47 realizes. She’s sorry this happened to her, and if B3-47 had room for anything else in her head but shock and grief, she’d probably appreciate it.

“We can wipe your memory again, if you want,” Glory says gently. “Start you somewhere new, make you forget everything that happened.”

But B3-47 recoils instinctually. _No. I don’t want that._ Swallows hard and shakes her head, standing up to her full height.

“No. I want to come with you. To fight. I don’t want to forget what I am,” B3-47 says, clear and sure, and the approving, razor-edged grin that slashes across Glory’s face is the first thing that’s soothed B3-47’s shattered heart in days.

“I…” Glory hesitates, schooling her expression back to neutral concern, but B3-47 can already tell she’s won.

“They cut ‘synthfucker’ into his chest,” B3-47 says calmly, like it’s nothing, like it hadn’t cracked her entire world clean in two. “My husband. They strung him up and carved what I was to him into his skin, and they killed him. I won’t go back to not knowing. I _can’t_ go back to not knowing.”

Glory bites her lip but doesn’t answer, looking at B3-47 like she’s never seen anything quite like her before.

“Please,” B3-47 says, and Glory breaks with a sharp exhale.

“Okay. Okay. Christ, Dez is gonna kill me when I bring another one in, but…okay.” Glory says, her eyes glittering with something savage B3-47 can’t name, and B3-47’s hands tighten into fists at her sides. “Come back to HQ with me. But Dez gets the final say-so, aright? No promises.”

_I’m sorry, John. I’m so sorry. There’s not enough sorry in the whole world._

“Try and stop me.” B3-47 says, voice scraped rough and hoarse, and Glory laughs like that’s the best thing she’s ever heard.

 

 

II.

“You want to take the first watch, Morgan?”

The sun is setting low over the horizon, the sizzle of meat on the fire drifting through the camp and drawing everyone in like a beacon. Bishop rolls her eyes and sighs, making a show of reluctance but shrugging in agreement. The other caravan guards laugh and a thrill runs through Bishop, the warm glow of social approval and acceptance soaking into her skin like drugged sunshine.

It’s her first undercover mission; she’s is sprawled in front of the fire, playing a card game with two other caravaneers Dean and Cobra, making sure her pistol is clearly visible on her hip. Bishop lets one corner of her mouth curl up as she throws a pair of Queens down on the turned-up crate they’re using as a table.

It’s a Morgan smile; Morgan’s a hardass, a gambler, recently sober and trying to get herself back on track for her two kids back in DC, and a winning hand is one of her favorite things. It’s a good cover — Drummer Boy helped her come up with it, helping her fill in the details and double-checking the research just in case — and with every passing moment she can feel Morgan settling against her like a second skin.

Desdemona had given her something easy for her first field op; scouting out the route for an upcoming synth (package, she reminds herself firmly) retrieval. No combat, no contacts to make, no info to gather or steal or plant, just a low-key recon mission so Bishop can get her feet wet and find out if she can handle undercover. And from her very first words as Morgan, Bishop is equal parts surprised and filled with a fierce joy so intense it practically lifts her off her feet, because she discovered she can lie easy as _breathing_.

Sure, she’s a caravan worker running with Lucas Mills, escorting leather leg wraps and combat helmets and a shit ton of raw materials, heading up to Bunker Hill for a break and a drink and a quick fuck. Nothing unusual, nothing to see here. She’s just a young woman gone old too fast, with a story like a million others out in the Commonwealth. Just enough texture to be real, not particularly friendly but not an asshole either, with a few quirks that Bishop replicates perfectly every time.

It feels _good_ , slipping into someone else’s life. It feels easy. Natural. If she were more interested in examining the past, in digging into the why and the how of it all, she’d maybe suspect it was a synth thing. Did the Institute make her like this, so flexible and impermanent and able to adjust with startling speed to whatever someone wanted her to be? Pouring herself quicksilver-like into any handy vessel, abandoning it the moment it’s no longer working — she loves it already, but there’s a hook in there that makes her shiver all the same, a tang of revulsion spreading over the roof of her mouth when she least expects it.

Bishop isn’t stupid, not by a long shot. She knows why the Institute would want to make her and every other synth so malleable. So controllable. Why they would design it feel so natural to dive so deeply into another person that her real self is barely a ripple on the surface.

 _Maybe humans can do this too, though._ Bishop isn’t sure. John used to play pretend, used to be able to imitate their neighbors so perfectly that she could tell immediately who he was play-acting as. But could he have done this? Bishop doesn’t know, won’t ever know, and yeah by now she understands grief is a funny thing but somehow that hits her like a punch to the solar plexus.

She’ll never know anything new about him.

“Hey. You alright there, darlin’?” Dean asks, his greying hair ruffling in the evening breeze, and Bishop digs her fingernails painfully into her palm, careful not to draw blood.

She needs to stay focused. She needs to stay _Morgan_. She needs to bend the sorrow inside her like heated metal and twist it into something useful, into a tool, into a weapon. Anything other than this; an anchor wrapped around her ankles, dragging her down to the bottom of the sea.

If she can’t destroy it, she damn well better learn how to use it.

“Fine,” Bishop says shortly. Morgan doesn’t like getting caught feeling maudlin, gets snappy when she does. “Better grab dinner before the rest of these jack-offs take it, huh?”

Dean smiles gently, knowingly, and again that shiver of power vibrates deep in her bones; because he doesn’t know, he _doesn’t_ know anything about her. How real can her heartbreak be, really, if no one knows anything about it? When she’s Morgan she can’t be Barbara, and she’s not even really Bishop (and definitely, _definitely_ not B3-47, no sir, not now not ever, never ever ever going back to that), and the rush of liquid-sweet freedom courses through her like a hit of Med-X in her bloodstream.

She’s safe as long as she’s someone else.

The wind is picking up, the shadows are growing longer on the ground. She stands, rolling her shoulders and stretching her arms up over her head, fingertips brushing the sky. The stars are just beginning to shine, barely visible but getting brighter every moment.

 

 

III.

She doesn’t have anyone to blame but herself, really. It was Bishop’s bright idea to dig into this Institute project, Bishop’s idea to persuade Dez to let her check it out, Bishop’s idea to plop herself down outside a Vault that hasn’t seen any action in over sixty years (and even that part is fuzzy, unreliable — _maybe_ someone went down, possibly with a bunch of lab-coated Institute hacks, but _also_ with some Killer Smile merc? Bishop has her doubts). Probably a waste of time. She should head over to Salem instead, maybe check out the rumblings and bizarre readings P.A.M’s been picking up at Parsons.

But no. There’s something here, she can feel it, and she’ll take crap from Dez and Carrington and whoever else has the balls to give it to her, because Bishop learned a long time ago to trust her own gut above everything else. The files she managed to dig up, even encrypted and impossible to fully parse, all point at something big.

So fuck it. Bishop’s an old hand at waiting it out.

Hours go by, the sun drifting overhead, Bishop humming along lightly to an old Gilbert and Sullivan tune. It’s peaceful — not many people come this far north — and Bishop is just thinking that even she might have to concede this round when the ground under her feet begins to rumble very, very slightly.

Sucking in a fast, hard breath, Bishop goes flat on her belly and scoots forward on her elbows, peering out through the thick ground cover at the Vault entrance below. A rusted, painful-sounding metallic creak, and miraculously, _incredibly_ , the door begins to rotate and shift. A flock of birds takes off from a nearby tree, dark shapes against the afternoon sky, startled by the sudden sounds.

Bishop holds her breath, too stunned even to start mentally congratulating herself, because this is unprecedented. A Vault, opening on its own, and she’s here to see it. Slowly, she reaches down and pulls her gun up, but leaves it still in her hands for now.

The door opens, the platform rises, and — it’s a woman. A lone woman, emerging from the Vault with a hand over her eyes to shield herself from the weak sunshine, and Bishop doesn’t know what she was expecting but it sure as hell wasn’t _this_.

 _Something’s wrong with her_ , Bishop thinks distantly, watching the woman stagger a few steps and then fall to her knees, shivering and gasping. She’s pale, and not in an attractive, Victorian way, either — chalky and sickly, with some greenish undertones that suggest impending nausea. Dishwater blonde hair sticking to her sweaty forehead, eyes huge in her face, shaky with shock and something like despair.

A mess. A dangerous, mysterious mess.

Tall, though. Tall and oddly strong. Those Vault suits don’t leave much to the imagination, and even from this far away Bishop can tell that this woman is fit and muscled. Strange, for a Vaultie. They tend towards the shrimpy side, with their vacuum-sealed food and tiny rooms keeping them pocket-sized. Not this woman, though. Even dazed and almost-but-not-quite puking her guts out, Bishop thinks this woman could handle herself in a fistfight.

Was it a Vault full of fitness freaks? Was she exiled? Is that why she looks like she’s never seen the outside world before?

What _happened_ in there?

Bishop is a bit disappointed, she realizes. She’d been hoping for something a little more exciting, a little more useful or at least dramatic, than just some sad, shell-shocked lady crawling in the dirt. This must just be more impenetrable Vault-Tec cruelty, more science experiments gone completely, maliciously insane. This can’t be anything that’ll help them.

The woman is still on her hands and knees, and when Bishop eyes her down the scope of her gun, she realizes with a start the woman is weeping. It makes her look even worse, her eyes red and puffy, hand over her mouth as if trying to keep the wracking sobs from spilling out, the slant of the afternoon light glinting off the gold band on her finger.

She won’t make it a week, Bishop thinks, a silvery twinge of sadness wrapping around her heart like a wire, and briefly considers sending some bullet-shaped, right-to-the-head, won’t-feel-a-thing mercy her way, but quickly discards it. Not really her style; even if this woman is some Institute shill, or some helpless Typhoid Mary come to unleash some new horror on the world, or any of the other hundred Bad Things that click through Bishop’s pristine brain, she deserves a chance. A shot, at whatever life she can make for herself.

Bishop will keep an eye on her, in the meantime. Just in case.

 

 

IV.

 _Another day, another recalibration_ , Bishop thinks, running two fingers under the edge of her pompadour wig to scratch at her stubbly hair. The Vaultie — _Anne_ — is at HQ, sleeping off some serious burns and patched-up injuries, and Bishop is still reeling from the knock-down surprise of seeing her here, with them, with her arms up and a too-good-to-be-true story about insider intel on the Brotherhood _and_ the Institute.

Bishop had been keeping tabs on her, of course. Ever since that first day, Bishop had decided to designate a few Watching The Vaultie days once every other month or so, and she would’ve bet big money that Anne wouldn’t’ve been caught dead here with the Railroad. She’d been with the Brotherhood for nearly a year — one of their best and brightest, if Bishop’s info was correct — but something must have happened. Something big. Earth-shattering. Something that blew everything else out of the water, because now now she’s defecting. Now she’s here to fight with the rebels.

Normally Bishop wouldn’t trust her. Doesn’t really trust her now, or at least doesn’t trust that she has anything on her mind except revenge; Bishop can work with revenge though, can rely on that over most things that drive a new initiate. But there’s something else there, too. Something in Anne’s eyes — it’s not even rage, really. It’s disgust, and bitterness, and a weariness so deep that Bishop almost feels bad for her.

Whatever she thinks about Anne personally — and Bishop has a _lot_ of thoughts on any adult who would willingly sign up for that fascist, genocidal BoS crap — it’s easy to see that the woman is exhausted. She’s running on the last of her reserve power, kept alive only by the grace of her Prewar nutrition and fitness and health.

And hey. When it comes down to it, intel is intel, and Anne’s ready to give the Railroad everything she’s got.

Munching on a snack cake, Bishop sidles up to Carrington as he’s fussing with a medical report. She’s hoping for a little more gossip; Carrington likes Anne, or as much as Carrington likes anyone. Bishop saw it spark all those months ago when Anne stumbled in for the first time looking for info on the Courser chip. Anne’s strict, no-nonsense adherence to rules and formality was like catnip to Carrington, even if Bishop and Glory were laughing behind their hands the whole time.

“So. Your girl’s back, huh,” Bishop says easily, leaning against his desk and facing away from him, courteously holding the snack cake in her other hand to avoid dusting him with powdered sugar.

“It appears so, yes,” Carrington says, turning slightly and raising a pointed eyebrow at Bishop’s insolent posture, but leaving it for now.

“What do you think happened up there?” Bishop says. “On that big Death Ship? I had Anne pegged as a true believer; ex-military, rule follower as long as it gets her the biggest guns, pre-war concept of synths as machines…”

Carrington is silent for a long moment. Bishop polishes off her cake and waits patiently, brushing the crumbs off her fingers.

“True to form,” he says finally, “you’re not wrong, but not completely right, either. Yes, I believe she would’ve stayed with the Brotherhood if her CO hadn’t discovered...well. Hadn’t discovered that one of their highly decorated soldiers is...is a synth.”

 _Shit_. Bishop lets out a long, low whistle. “Fuck. Institute plant, huh?” _Serves ‘em right_ , she thinks, but keeps that little addendum to herself. She’s supposed to be focused on getting synths out of the Institute, not fantasizing about her two enemies blowing each other up. She knows Carrington won’t approve.

“Not exactly,” Carrington says, and Bishop doesn’t miss that he’s gone completely still, that he’s deliberately not looking at her, that is voice is softer than she’s ever heard.

“What then?”

“He — M7-97 — was one of ours. One of our packages. We wiped his memory, of course, and released him with the created memories of his choosing, but then he was recruited. By the Brotherhood.”

Rush of blood in her ears, a sudden blast of dizziness, and only years of training keeps her face relaxed and calm.

_What...How…_

“That’s…” Bishop whispers, then swallows hard to get her voice under control. “That’s insane.”

Her heart is pounding in her chest — a synth who was saved, rescued from the Institute, and then ran straight into the Brotherhood’s arms? It’s a farce. It’s ridiculous. The poor bastard wouldn’t even _know_.

“How could we let that happen?” Bishop says tightly, grateful as always for the shades that shutter her expression, that give her a dark, safe place to hide.

“What do you mean?” Carrington’s voice is back to normal — clipped and dispassionate, his shoulders up a little higher than normal, tense and wary.

“I mean, how could Dez let him...how could _anyone_ let him make that choice?”

Carrington glances up at her, half in shadow, and an expression flickers across his face too fast for Bishop to pin down.

“How could we not?” he says simply, and bends over his reports once again.

Bishop closes her eyes. If M7-97 didn’t want to remember...if he wanted so badly to be normal and safe…The grief for him, for her brother, for the life he could’ve had and _almost_ had and never will again, lodges in her throat like a stone.

_How could we not. How could we tell him, without breaking him. How could we ever give him an order, a command that he had to obey, ever again._

“So Anne found out, huh,” Bishop says, collecting herself, locking everything else away in a box to be examined probably never. “She found out, and she left? Because the Brotherhood’s corrupt?”

But that doesn’t make sense either.

“Their leader, Maxson, found out,” Carrington says with a hint of his usual exasperation, clearly trying to get Bishop to drop it and leave him alone. “And ordered Anne to kill M7-97. She refused. He repeated the order, and she... She convinced M7-97 to lay low for a while, told him that she’d find some way to fix it. And then she came here, after slaughtering every person at Saugus who got in her way.”

The burns, on Anne’s hands and face. Her bone-deep weariness. That blank-eyed fury.

“Why did she even enlist, then?” Bishop says, staring at the huddled, sleeping figure of Anne across the room. “If she didn’t think synths are ‘an unnatural abomination that need to be eradicated’. All of a sudden everything’s different, now that someone she _likes_ has skin in the game?"

“I don’t know,” Carrington says. “I don’t know why she does anything. She woke up to find out the world had ended, that everything she knew was gone. Who knows what’s going on in her head.”

 _No kidding_ , Bishop thinks, and can’t stop a rush of sympathy for the tired, prickly, lonely woman she watched crawl out of a Vault a year and a half ago.

“As long as she can get us inside the Institute,” Bishop says, and Carrington nods absently.

“My thoughts exactly.”

_Get us in there, lady. Get us in there and we’ll save them all. Even you._

 

 

V.

It’s the night before they infiltrate the Brotherhood, and the whole HQ is quiet. Even agents who aren’t in the loop on this one — and yes, Dez is still insisting on keeping them all siloed in their own field missions, thank God — can feel that something’s up. Everyone’s laying low, keeping to themselves, and so when Anne finds her in the tunnels, hovering above her awkwardly, Bishop is even more surprised than she would be normally.

Bishop is resting with her back against the wall, sitting crossed legged on the ground, doing her version of meditating. She looks up when Anne gestures uncertainly toward her.

“May I?” she asks, still a bit formal even now.

Bishop blinks, but pats the spot next to her. “Sure. Pull up some slimy brick.”

Grimacing a little but clearly choosing to ignore Bishop’s ‘distasteful’ quip, she sits, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket as she arranges herself next to Bishop. Fishing her ever-present lighter out, Bishop courteously lights her cigarette for her, letting Anne get comfortable.

She has an idea of what this is about — Bishop knows Anne won’t stay on with them, after, and is probably gearing up to tell her. Anne’s not here to save anyone, least of all synths; Bishop doesn’t think Anne is all that comfortable around synths, even now. Revolution was never one of Anne’s goals — Bishop thinks she’s probably seen enough change to last ten lifetimes.

Bishop doesn’t mind. Bishop understands. Anne’s been battered back and forth like a ship lost at sea, and she needs to be grounded for a while after this. Maybe forever. She won’t be looking to tear anything else down for a long, long time.

“So Yankee,” Bishop asks, leaning into the codename, and Anne’s jaw tightens slightly. “What brings you to my humble abode?”

“This isn’t your _abode_ ,” Anne says, irritated only out of habit, no real bite in her voice at all. “How do you know Spanish, anyway?”

“I have many skills,” Bishop says smoothly, and Anne snorts but doesn’t answer. For her it’s almost a laugh, and for a strange moment Bishop wishes that she could’ve known Anne before all of this, before the Institute and the Brotherhood and the bombs that burned the length and breadth of the sky.

Barbara might’ve liked Anne. Might’ve liked visiting her and her dark-haired wife with John. There’s a parallel universe out there where they’re friends, Bishop thinks, and for a moment her heart is pierced with a strange loneliness that she can’t explain.

They’re quiet, for a bit. Anne smokes, and Bishop waits.

“I need to tell you something,” Anne says seriously, and Bishop goes still. This isn’t what it’s like between them usually. This is something different.

“Sure,” Bishop says casually, carefully not looking at her.

“The leader of the Institute. I’ve met her, of course. Dez asked me to...so I did. I met her. And she…”

Bishop keeps her breathing calm and slow, can sense the tension and apprehension radiating off Anne like a physical presence.

“She’s my daughter,” Anne says finally.

Bishop stops breathing, her lungs and throat going rigid with shock. _What...how..._

“But...but that’s not...possible,” Bishop says, but even as the words leave her mouth she’s putting the pieces together.

_Cryo pods. Kellogg. The Institute scientists who were lurking around the Vault. Fuck. Fuck._

Anne glances at her sideways, her glasses slipping a little down her nose, and Bishop thinks her face could be carved out of marble, rigid and immovable and more sad than Bishop’s ever seen her.

“Fuck,” Bishop says finally, and Anne nods wearily in agreement. _Fuck, indeed_ , Bishop thinks, feeling a stupid, nervous grin fighting to get out.

“Yeah,” she says, stubbing her cigarette out on the floor next to her. “Older than me, too. Fucking Vault-Tec. Fucking Kellogg.”

“What,” Bishop starts, then swallows as her voice cracks. “What are you…” Can’t finish the question, can’t ask. How could anyone answer that honestly? How could they ask that of Anne, how the _hell_ did they let this happen, putting Anne in charge of taking down her own kid...

“I don’t know,” Anne says tiredly, and Bishop believes her. “I don’t know.”

Tentatively — this might be a mistake, might be an error of epic proportions — Bishop places a gentle hand on Anne’s shoulder. Anne’s breathing is fast, hitching a little, and for a terrifying moment Bishop thinks she might start weeping. They’re both in uncharted territory now. But then she evens out again, pulling herself back under control, dragging them both back to even ground.

Anne doesn’t speak, doesn’t cry or break down, just leans ever so slightly into the pressure of Bishop’s hand for a long moment, then stands and walks away.


	3. Jennifer Lands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, this has some dubcon elements in it that eventually leads to implied sex. Read at your own risk or feel free to skip if that's not your bag!

_most people die, but others just go_

 

I.

One night she went to sleep as Jennifer Lands, detective for Boston’s 8th Precinct, pain in her sergeant’s ass and local troublemaker, grieving the loss of her fiance and swearing vengeance on anyone who got in her way to figure out _how_ and what happened, whiskey warm in her belly, fingers curled into a tight, sad fist over her heart. One night she went to sleep and thought she’d fallen from grace so hard and fast that the landing had shattered her, that nothing could possibly be worse than Nick dead and her family in danger and her squad too cowardly to fight back against the monsters that threatened her city. One night she went to sleep with blood in her veins and air in her lungs, with skin and bones and hair and teeth.

Then she woke up.

It’s been months since that day, when she woke up in a garbage heap a hundred years after everything had been blasted flat and cracked like melted glass, in a body so alien and strange she spent the first few hours shoving a metallic, skeletal finger down her throat trying to force her body to do something, _anything_ , that felt even remotely normal. But no dice; there’s no pain, no gag reflex, a sense of touch that she can somewhat interpret but just barely, and startlingly sharp vision for someone used to wearing glasses. Her hair, once thick and black, kinky and soft enough for Nick to run his fingers through, was gone. She was taller than she’d been before by almost half a foot, her skin grey and scarred and oddly stiff. The only thing that felt right is the patches in her body, whole pieces of her gone missing, a visible marker of everything she’d lost.

 _It’s funny_ , she thinks later, much later, months after she screamed and beat her fists on the ground and tried to gulp down air so poison it killed everything living thing within fifteen feet of the nuclear dump site and sobbed dryly with a throat that wasn’t meant to make those types of sounds. _The whole world had been obliterated, and I couldn’t see past the destruction of my own body._

She isn’t, strictly, alive anymore. She isn’t _dead_ , but she isn’t alive, and oh yeah — apparently things got so much worse than she could’ve ever imagined that night, when she went to sleep for the last time. War, and the bombs, and a hundred years of the iron-willed scramble to rebuild amid the ashes of the worst mistake humanity ever made.

Turns out, you miss quite a bit when you’re busy being dead.

Now she’s here, making her way slowly across what used to be the exit for I-95 off Highway 3, walking down an on-ramp that miraculously survived mostly intact. It’s dark, but the light of long-dead stars are more than enough to see by now that she’s got the benefit of synthetic-perfect vision. Traveling by night is always a gamble — there’s dangerous groups out here, roaming the hills in the shadows, hungry for blood and flesh and the whipcrack pleasure-pain of a good fight — but these days, Jenny’s more afraid of the ‘good people’.

Raiders will strip her for parts, will rip out the wires and circuitry that keeps her conscious, will sell her piece by piece for bullets or vodka or a body to warm their beds. Good people, if she chooses badly ( _again, again, again_ ), will toss her out and bar the door. Good people will stay silent while she’s devoured. Good people will say ‘sorry’ with their mouths and ‘fuck you’ with their eyes, and Jenny just can’t take it. Not these days. Not anymore.

She’d rather go down swinging. She’s rather be scraped away from the inside out than ever see that again.

Diamond City might be the answer. It’s the biggest settlement around, as far as she can tell, and she’s had better luck with bigger places. And, she thinks to herself with a secret, tired grin, as a die-hard Sox fan like every Boston cop before her, the idea of living at Fenway does have its appeal.

_If only I could tell O’Malley — Christ, he’d get a kick out of that. Living in the goddamn stands. He might’ve even died happy, if I could’ve told him we’d all be official Fenway residents after everything else went to shit._

Jenny isn’t sure about what happened to everyone else, after she slept the big sleep ( _death_ , she can’t help thinking. _I died and woke up again_ ). O’Malley, Jenks, Drummond, they must’ve seen the light in the sky and...what? What did they say? Did they have any time at all before they were annihilated so completely it’s like they were never here at all? She knows but she doesn’t _know_ , and it gnaws at her still.

The buildings are getting taller, even in their smashed-down broken-toy state. She must be getting closer, winding her way to the heart of Boston, and sometimes in the dark she can see how it all used to be. The building and the cars and the trees, Nick at her side with a sly joke and a half smile, a crisp autumn breeze and sunshine and the smell of the sea.

Jenny doesn’t breath; her throat doesn’t go tight and thick, her eyes don’t burn with the beginnings of tears, her skin doesn’t flush unevenly and blotchily. Jenny just walks, and remembers, and carries the weight of the whole obliterated world on her back; heavy and beautiful and the only thing she has left.

 

II.

_Shit. This isn’t good._

A hard, sharp shove in the middle of her back and Jenny stumbles through the doorway, barely catching herself on the edge of a desk in middle of the room. It’s dim, shadows deep in the corners of the room, and after the overbright lights in the rest of the Vault Jenny blinks, instinctive and human-like, alone in the darkness.

“Not so cocky now, are ya, Lands? Comin’ in here, fuckin’ everything up for us,” Dino says, voice muffled through the thick pane of smokey, one-way plexiglass.

Jenny snorts (it took her a while to figure out how to make her voice do that again, how to mimic the subtle, wordless sounds of disgust, agreement, disbelief; all the little grace notes in human communication that she hadn’t realized she relied on so much. Words are good, sure, but they’re not the only things, and Jenny needs every tool in her toolbelt).

“The only ones fucking things up here are Skinny and his girl. If you’d just let me talk to him —”

“Yeah, right,” Dino says, a mean laugh cracking just under the surface. “You ain’t gonna fool me with that peacemaker crap. As much as Skinny hates to keep a _lady_ waiting, you’re just gonna have to sit tight here, sweetheart.”

Jenny can’t really roll her eyes, but she does her best approximation anyway. She’s not sure what freaks him out more, that she’s inescapably a synth, or (to him) inexplicably a woman in a non-woman body. People like Dino, despite being a criminal and morally bankrupt and deeply invested in his own fantasy of operating outside the bounds of convention, are only happy when things are in _categories_ , when the world can be quantified and measured and he can put every little thing in a neatly-labeled box. No fractions or remainders, nothing past that wide, dark line of ‘normal’.

Jenny knows better. What Jenny’s learned about personhood, about the body and the soul and what makes us who we are, runs deep as the ocean and far as the stars; more complex and strange and perfect than anyone so trapped in their own head as Dino could ever understand, and if Jenny was feeling more generous she might even try to explain it to him.

“That’s what I thought,” Dino says smugly, stupidly, and Jenny closes her eyes and nearly laughs out loud at his naked posturing.

 _I should probably be more scared_ , she thinks ruefully, settling down in the room’s only chair to wait it out. Skinny’s vicious, no matter how Old-Timey, I Only Come After Those Who Fight In My Arena he sometimes gets, especially with her. But she’s in danger here and she knows it. Skinny has a rep to maintain, and the amount of shit he’ll take from his henchmen for going easy on her is inversely related to her chances of walking out of here alive and relatively whole.

In a way, all of this is so familiar she’s almost nostalgic. Back when she was a police officer and not a PI — back when she was a human, back when she was someone else and not whoever she is now — she got threatened with this crap all the time. This future-world’s version of thugs and mobsters, they’re not that different from Whitey and Big Mack and all the others she spent her (short, young, painfully idealistic) life chasing.

Kidnapping and intimidation were all on the menu back then, too; and in her heart of hearts, Jenny craved that part of it too, along with the moral certainty and the steady paycheck. It drove her mother and sister crazy with worry, made everyone around her go haywire and terrified and trying desperately to chain her to the ground; she knows now it was selfish, to be so unconcerned about them, to hold their love so cheaply. But this job — it’s like a drug, like sex, like shooting across the sky like a comet, flying past everything and everyone else and straight into adrenaline-soaked danger. Heating up her skin and racing through her veins and hardening her bones to steel til she was practically invincible. She knew it was bad her for, that it might even kill her, but it felt too good to stop.

If it hadn’t been for Nick...if Nick hadn’t been so stubborn and visible and brave, if he hadn’t met her and fallen in love like an idiot...

No. She can’t do this again. She won’t. Jenny’s tried this before, retracing her steps to find the fault lines that cracked under her feet, tried untangling the threads of her life so she can trace it back to the point where it all began, tried diagramming exactly how it all fell apart so she can solve for X and then just let go.

It never works. All she does is get far enough back to brush up against the broken edges of her life, sharp and brutal and unforgiving, and she thinks this time there can’t possibly be enough pain to make her stop, but there is. There’s always more pain than she can bear.

 _It’s done. It’s over._ She can’t ever save him, and she damn sure can’t save herself.

A sudden shot, quiet enough that it must be from a silencer, and a muffled groan snap her back to herself. She’s on her feet and over to the window so fast her frame protests with a loud creak. The window is still fogged, still leaving her on the wrong side of an interrogation room, and she always knew the one-way glass made perps anxious but this is so much worse than she ever imagined.

Another shot, louder this time, right outside the door, and the slumping, heavy fall of a body. Jenny holds her breath instinctively, even though she doesn’t need to. The intercom crackles to life, and a woman’s voice reaches through the static.

“Hey, you okay in there? Are you Jenny Lands? Your assistant send me to come find you.”

 

III.

“So you’re taking Diaz with you to Fort Hagen?”

It’s late. Ellie left hours ago, leaving Jenny to cobble her notes together on the latest missing person case in the dim lamplight. She doesn’t mind — it’s quieter at night, cool and still, and Jenny can run her diagnostic checks when no one’s around to see the disconcerting, machine-like whirring and slackening of her facial features. Anne had interrupted that, when she came by looking haggard and exhausted.

Anne does this sometimes. Stops by at the oddest hours, haggling with Percy and dropping by the agency with a soft, firm knock and straight-backed posture. Jenny told her a while back that there was no need, that she didn’t sleep in the traditional sense, but Anne had just frowned and muttered something about ‘wasn’t raised to be impolite’. It was oddly sweet — Anne, as far as she can tell, isn’t one for cuddly friendship or expansive gestures of goodwill, but she is unfailingly courteous in a way Jenny associates with her old squad, with military vets and natives of the long-drowned South.

Now, though, she’s swaying on her feet, having stiffly refused the chair Jenny offered. The skin around her eyes is dark and bruised, her dark blonde hair hanging limp and ragged around her face, and she’s chewing distractedly on a dirty thumbnail. Jenny grimaces sympathetically, but stays seated, her mind still half on the casework.

_Finding out your kid is ten years old instead of ten months takes its toll on a person, I guess._

“Yes,” Anne says, cutting her eyes over to Jenny, something flickering across her fast too fast for Jenny to catch. “I don’t...it’s not that you’re not capable, Jennifer. I just need Diaz’s particular set of skills for this.”

Jenny smiles up at her, very slightly. “It’s fine. No offense taken. Lucy’s a hell of a shot.”

“She is,” Anne agrees. “And she...well. She’s flexible, in terms of approach, and I…”

“It’s okay,” Jenny says again, more firmly. “You don’t have to explain.”

Truth be told, Jenny’s a little relieved. It’s not that she doesn’t respect what Anne’s doing — rescuing her daughter, going up against the toughest merc Jenny’s ever had the misfortune of knowing — but Jenny’s not interested in getting involved with old grudges, and Anne’s so twitchy and strange right now that it’s setting her teeth on edge.

 _Couldn’t pay me to go along with a hair-trigger Anne and a tightly-wound Diaz,_ Jenny thinks grimly, tapping her pen on the desk absently.

“Thanks,” Anne says, serious as ever. “I really — hey, is that a picture of David Ortiz?”

Jenny blinks, completely wrong-footed, and follows Anne’s gaze to the dusty, torn poster tacked to the wall above her desk.

“I — yeah,” Jenny says slowly. “Big Papi, when he and Davey Roberts won it for the Sox back in...jeez, ‘04? The cursebreakers. You know.”

“I remember,” Anne says, voice gone soft and a smile tugging at her lips.

Jenny laughs, reaching up to pull the poster down and hand it to Anne for a better look. “Not even you were alive back then, pal.”

“True,” Anne says, taking the poster and holding it gently, with a reverence that would make Jenny’s breath catch in her throat if she still needed to breathe. “But my whole family is — was —. We were Sox fans, so. It’s in our genes. The innate and immediate love for Big Papi and Pedroia and all the guys.”

“Tell me about it,” Jenny says, falling back into office colleague sports talk so swiftly and easily it’s like coming home. “There wasn’t a cop on the beat back in my day who didn’t pray nightly to the ghost of Terry Francona to guide our boys to the World Series.”

“And what’s Catholicism compared to Bill Belichick?” Anne says, handing the poster back with a wry, crooked grin Jenny’s never seen before.

“Let me know if you ever find out — I never have.” Jenny says, leaning back in her chair, warm affection filling her like a summer’s breeze, and for the first time Anne looks at her like a friend. _No one else here knows about the Old World, not since the ghouls got kicked out. It would be nice, to have her and her daughter here._

The moment stretches out between them, but Anne looks away and clears her throat and it snaps like hard candy.

“I’ve got to get some sleep,” Anne says, tugging absently on a loose thread hanging off the cuff of her Brotherhood uniform.

“Sure thing,” Jenny says, trying not to feel rebuffed. _She’s got a lot on her mind. Leave it alone._

“But I wanted to...I wanted to give you these. Before I left.” Anne twists around, pulling a stack of holotapes out of her pack and placing them on the desk. “I found them a while back, and I thought you might want them.”

Jenny picks up the one on top, examining it, and when she reads the etched title she nearly drops it out of shock.

_Eddie Winter: Police Precinct 8._

“I…” Jenny trails off, looking back up at Anne, but she’s already opening the door to leave.

“Figured it was personal,” Anne says over her shoulder. “Didn’t listen to more than that first one.” And then she’s gone, the door latching closed behind her with a too-loud click, leaving Jenny alone and rocked backward with a bone-deep shock she thought she’d never feel again.

 _Eddie Winter. Nick’s killer._ Jenny doesn’t shiver, but she feels the impulse under her synthetic skin. Eddie Winter, and the keys to find him, her last loose end and her greatest shame. She could find him, after all this time. Could get what so few people ever do — she could get answers. Absolution. Closure.

Jenny places her hands on the desk; one with silicone coating just starting to peel at her fingertips, the other a wire skeleton with nothing hidden, everything exposed, leaving her bare and shining and dangerous.

She picks up the first tape with her human-like hand, and reaches for the tape player in the bottom drawer of her desk with her other, realer one.

 

IV.

Magnolia sounds good tonight; Jenny’s always liked her, has on more than one occasion wished Vadim and Yefim would spring for something a little nicer than that shitty, scratched-up jukebox in the Dugout, but tonight she’s transcendent. Every word is a caress, every note is dipped in honey, every pause filled with velvety significance, and the lights glinting off her red dress are glimmering like sunlight on the waves. And sure, Magnolia always moves when she sings but somehow Jenny’s never quite noticed before how her deliciously her hips sway, how the edges of her dark hair brush lightly against her collarbone.

With a start, Jenny realizes she’s feeling kind of...drunk. Drunk and _aroused_ , and if you’d asked her yesterday she’d’ve said that was impossible. She hasn’t been drunk or horny in decades, hasn’t ever figured out a way to strong arm her mechanical body into some approximation of intoxication or sexual excitement, and after a while she just. Gave up. It wasn’t the worst or the strangest thing she’s had to adjust to, and soon she’d stopped even wishing for either sensation. Too much too do here, too many other things that thrilled her, and Jenny learned a long time ago that she had to make compromises to stay ‘alive’ in this version of herself.

But. It is nice, even if it’s startling enough that she should probably be worried.

Leaning luxuriously back against the plastic-covered seat, Jenny closes her eyes and lets it all wash over her, through her. The music, the lights, the floorboard simmering and vibrating under feet; it’s like floating, like drifting through the air unencumbered. Like climbing out of her own life and leaving everything else behind.

 _Must be a side effect of the memory dump, or memory share, or whatever it is Amari did when she plugged Kellogg directly into my brain._ It was a risky idea, but Jenny’s always been a sucker for risk, and Anne had looked at her such an open, terrifying supplication on her face. How could Jenny have refused?

But now that it’s done, now that Anne’s sprinting heedlessly back into the center of what ruined her life, Jenny should be heading back to DC. The agency needs her, she has a dozen open cases on her desk right now, but instead she’s here. At the Third Rail, weirdly sexy and buzzed and fizzy like her brain’s been stirred around with a wooden spoon, scrambled and sparking and loose, unspooling slowly around the edges.

_“Feels good, doesn’t it?”_

Jenny snaps to attention, jerking so fast and hard that she nearly falls off her seat, whipping her head around to see who said that so close, so intimately close and quiet.

_“Not out there, buttercup. I’m in here, with you.”_

And that _voice_ , whiskey-rough and smokey, with a scrape like the crackle of static on the radio, fills Jenny’s head.

“Kellogg,” Jenny whispers, frozen with shock in the middle of the floor, hand going automatically to the pistol on her hip, eyes still scanning the thin crowds fruitlessly, because this is...this is impossible...

_“Got a little more than you bargained for when you spread your robo-brain wide open for me, huh?”_

And Jenny _snarls_ , long-dead human instinct pulling her mouth into an ugly, almost painful shape, and she feels Sarah Kellogg’s laughter echo inside her own head.

_“Now, now. You were enjoying yourself just a minute ago; I can keep that going for you, if you’re nice enough.”_

“Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Jenny spits, stalking away from the other patrons shooting her disgruntled, annoyed looks. Suddenly, Jenny realizes how dangerous this could be — can Kellogg do more than whisper creepily at her? Can she take over Jenny’s primary drives, her motor functions? What exactly can she access, because this shouldn’t — _couldn’t_ — be possible. Turning abruptly, Jenny taking the stairs at a run, ignoring Charlie’s surprised call, slipping past Ham before he can slow her down with questions.

“Get the fuck out of my head,” Jenny whispers, trying hard to ignore the alien, bizarre feeling of someone else speaking in her own mind.

_“Aww, c’mon. Don’t be like that. I’m not gonna hurt you — you’re my only lifeline, after that bitch nuked me.”_

“She should’ve killed you harder,” Jenny says quietly, acutely aware of how bad it’ll be for her if anyone spots her talking to herself. Malfunctioning synths, even in Goodneighbor, make people nervous, and Jenny’s built her entire second life on keeping people calm.

And then, from nowhere, another wave of desire flows through Jenny, stopping her in her tracks and leaving her reeling. It feels good, it feels wrong but so very good, it turns her inside out with its potency.

“What — how —” Jenny says, dazed and gasping and stumbling into an alley to get away from prying eyes, to outrun that sticky-sweet voice.

_“I might not last much longer, Lands — I’m hanging on by a few loose wires here. Don’t you wanna help me go out with a bang?”_

“How are you even doing this?” Jenny says, leaning up against a brick wall behind the Rex, hands clenched determinedly at her sides, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to block everything out through sheer willpower.

_“I’m with the Institute, remember? You’re not the first synth I’ve brain-fucked — it’s all in here, where I can get at it.”_

A sharp wind swirls around her, sending her trench coat flapping around her suddenly warm, hypersensitive body. “You’re disgusting.”

_“Maybe. But you like it, don’t you? I could make you feel even better. I could make you remember all sorts of things — a tongue on your clit, a hand between your legs, your fingers against someone else’s throat or tit or cunt. Let me in, baby.”_

Pleasure sparks across her skin, rippling outward from someplace deep inside her, and Jenny bites her tongue to keep from moaning out loud. So vulgar, so _exposed_ , out here where anyone could see her, and Jenny can’t stop the images that flicker through her mind: dangerous, beautiful Sarah on her back (she remembers her, from back in DC — hair styled just on the side of raider, leather jacket, tall and sinewy and magnetic), kneeling over her, jacket and gloves still on but peeling off her pants, her wicked grin and dark eyes.

_“Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. C’mon, please.”_

And even through the heavy haze of lust, Jenny can hear that thread of fear, of longing. Kellogg’s not stupid — she knows the first thing Jenny would do is go straight to Amari and scrape this last, lingering piece of her into the garbage. And yeah, Kellogg wants to mess with her, with anyone who had a hand in her way-overdue demise, but it’s more than that, and Jenny realizes this brain-share thing might go both ways because suddenly she knows.

If Sarah Kellogg has to die, if this the end for her after all these years, she wants to do it on her terms: screaming and swearing and fucking Death into the mattress even as she embraces it.

_“Yeah yeah, that too. Whatever gets me into your metaphorical pants, doll.”_

And Jenny grins, relenting, and on her way to the front door of the Rex to get herself and her weirdest one night stand ever a room, she feels Sarah laugh again, triumphant and grateful and terrified; they both know she’ll go to Amari right after.

But first: this.

 

V.

After talking to the Nakano family, after walking around their home and listening for the ghost of their missing daughter and running her fingers over the debris of their life, Jenny steps outside for some air. It’s funny, that people still let that obvious euphemism fly with her. Politeness, or maybe it’s just that no matter how blatantly her body creaks mechanically or how yellow-bright her eyes glow, no one ever wants to really see her.

Jenny wonders, walking out to the little dock around the back of the house as the sun shines weakly through the heavy cloud cover, how many times a human face has been mentally papered over her own, her skin smoothed out, her lips filled in, her eyes dimmed back to brown. The Nakanos are definitely doing it. She probably should’ve brought Ellie, or even Piper, to talk to them instead of her. They’re not looking for a synth to save their strange, lovely, synth-obsessed daughter. That even if Jenny found her, she’d lead her further down the path of delusional synthdom rather than bring her home.

Which is so far off base it’s laughable, but it’s perception that matters, not reality. Not when it comes to her livelihood. Her job. The only thing of her old life — Jenny’s old life, the real Jenny, the burden and the gift she carries within her still — that she has left.

At the edge of the dock, Jenny sits cross-legged on the damp planks, bracing her arms behind her and tilting her face up to the sky, letting her soft, battered fedora slip farther back. It’s different up here; the heavy fog wrapping around her like blanket, the thick smell of reeds and seaweed permeating every surface, strange animal calls bouncing off water, campfire smoke and the bitter tinge of lamp oil.

Far Harbor. That’s where the girl went. Up north, to a place she hasn’t seen since the bombs fell. Her and Nick used to visit Maine every now and then — it was a cheap vacation for a young Boston couple back then, cheerfully pretending that live lobster and fresh blueberries were novel enough to count as exotic and thrilling. They’d talked about moving there one day, getting cute jobs and a cute cottage and living cute little lives together, all while knowing nothing could pry Jenny away from the force and Nick would go crazy with boredom at a small-town newspaper in three weeks flat.

It had been fun to pretend, though.

 _Maybe it’s time for another vacation_ , she thinks, watching the shadows swirl just under the surface of the water, pulling her gaze deeper and farther away. Maybe it’s time to back, to find this girl and see what’s become of that little fishing village.

Something about it feels…right. She can’t explain it, but there’s a pull in her, ever since Anne disappeared off the face of the Earth, to get out of Diamond City, the whole Commonwealth. To go north across the seas, up to Far Harbor.

Winter is all finished, tied up neatly with a bow, and Ellie’s worked enough cases to hold down the fort for a few weeks. Probably forever, and not for the first time Jenny thinks she should invest in an updated sign for the agency. _Lands and Perkins Investigations. Has a nice ring to it._

Jenny’s not sure why — it’s just a feeling, strong as any hunch, that there’s something for her to find up there. She’s been having…not dreams, exactly, because she doesn’t sleep. But flashes of something, sense-memories of water against her synthetic skin, a comforting presence, a name she can almost remember before it slips out of her grasp her like a ribbon on the wind. She’s had odd memory breaks and minor malfunctions before, but not like this. Nothing this clear, nothing this bright and sharp and almost painfully familiar.

And the strangest, most unsettling, most thrilling part — these are memories about her. About her synthetic body and human-like sentience. Her, not Jenny Lands, the human detective who perished along with most everyone else when the world shot itself in the face. These memories are in the New World, before the garbage dump wake-up call, and the idea that she could have had any sort of life before she woke up with Jenny’s life in her head is like balancing above an endless chasm; exhilarating and terrifying and paralyzing.

Now that Winter is done and Anne is avenged and Bishop is so thoroughly saved she’s busy saving everyone else, maybe she can finally start to unravel the painful, dangerous mystery she’s spent a hundred years repressing.

Because Jenny Lands died when the bombs fell. There’s no question of that, not anymore. She’s someone else, and it’s time to find out who.


	4. Sarah Kellogg

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter right on the heels of the last one, cause MAN this sucker wanted to be done and out of my dumb brain. Hope you guys enjoyed - it was a trip to think about and write, and maybe now I can get back to the fun stuff. You know I love you all.

_it’s not the fall that kills you_

 

I.

Sarah hadn’t sure what to expect when she stumbled into the little circle of torn-down homes twenty miles south of the strip. This settlement was small enough that she hadn’t heard much about it, and she looked every inch the bandit in her cracked leathers and bayoneted pipe pistol and freely bleeding head wound. Towns like this didn’t always take kindly to people like her, with good reason if she’s being honest, but she had been desperate.

But she got lucky. She got _beyond_ lucky, because somehow she was judged trustworthy enough and got shepherded into a little shack by a lookout, and is currently getting her face stitched back together by someone guy barely older than her. No doctor, he’s the closest they’ve got, but Sarah isn’t about to be picky. _Better than bleeding to death._

Sarah doesn’t think she could’ve stood the humiliation of dying before she even got out of the fucking desert.

Gripping the chair under her so tight her knuckles bleach white, Sarah tries to block out the tugging, sharp-edged pain and keep her eyes on the prize. She’s getting out, she’s leaving this dusty hellscape behind her and going east, away from the heat and Vegas and the sticky-tar politics. Out here, it’s pick your side or die, and after everything that went down with Mr. House and the NCR and Caesar, she’s never wants to be on anyone’s side but her own.

 _It’s all a fucking game_ , Sarah thinks, not for the first time. Working for anyone else, being used as a pawn for someone else’s gain, it’s all a crock. The army, every town she comes across, even a few raider gangs have tried to size her up and get her to join — this last one at knifepoint, stupid bastard — but she’s not biting, not anymore.

Sarah’s not hitching her wagon to anyone. Sarah’s an island, and she intends to stay that way.

“So you’re all on your own?” the doctor asks, eyeing her in an intense, interested way as he gently dabs the new stitches with alcohol.

 _Conrad. His name’s Conrad_ , Sarah remembers, and really looks at him for the first time. Tall, dark hair and dark eyes, just enough scruff to be attractive. _Very attractive, actually._ Sarah lets out a breath against his fingers, just for fun, just to see what he does.

“Just me,” Sarah says, gritting her teeth against the stinging on her forehead and cheek. _It’s a miracle that motherfucker didn’t put my eye out. Should probably get an antibiotics shot while I’m here, too — no way that switchblade was anything close to clean._

“Hmmm. That just seems…” Conrad says, and for a sinking moment Sarah is sure he’s gonna go all gooey and soft about what a sweet sad girl she must be, and her hand drifts down to her hip, caressing the butt of her pistol before she can stop herself. “...medically unethical, is all. On my part, I mean.”

Sarah lets out a startled laugh, and Conrad’s knowing, satisfied grin is equal parts obnoxious and intriguing as he turns away and picks up a pair of delicate, tiny scissors.

“Yeah? How do you figure, doc?” she asks, relaxing marginally.

“I can’t let you go out there alone, with no medical professional on standby — most of the gangs at least have someone who can patch you up, you know.” Conrad’s not making eye contact, is blushing a little through his cocky smile, but he doesn’t hesitate as he snips away the excess medical thread that pulled her face back to something approaching normal.

 _Gonna leave a scar_ , she thinks. _A big one. Almost makes it worth it._

His hands are warm against her skin, and even through the alcohol he smells good. Nice. Smoky, but not in an unpleasant way. Sarah’s stomach swoops, electricity sparks under her skin, and she can feel herself hurtling toward another decision everyone else would classify as ‘stupid, reckless, dangerous’. She doesn’t even know him, but maybe that’s the best part.

“Guess you’d better come with me then, huh,” Sarah says, letting her voice drop with a little of that purr that men and women alike can’t resist. “Get outta this shitty town and keep me on my feet.”

Conrad’s eyes widen, surprise wiping his face blank, and Sarah is uncomfortably aware of how handsome he still is, even without the flirty-flirt grin. _Careful, careful, careful,_ her mother’s anxious voice whispering from some secret, repressed corner of her heart. There are so many ways this is a bad idea, and the pathetic part of her that she’s spent 20 years squashing tries to clamp her down, to wrap itself around her body and her heart and keep her still and silent and buried alive under her mother and father’s sins.

Fuck it. Good or bad, she makes her own calls now.

“Are you...wait, seriously?” he says, glancing around and leaning closer to her, his breath ghosting across her lips, and she can practically taste his excitement. Resists the urge to kiss him — that’ll come later, when one side of her face stops aching and she’s not at risk of pulling out all her stitches, but she’s really hoping it’ll be as good as she’s imagining.

“As a heart attack,” she says conspiratorially, and feels another shiver at how easy it is, to get someone to do what she wants. “I’m heading out tonight — if you wanna get out of here and see some real money, then meet me at sundown on the south road outta town.”

She hops off the table, grinning and heading out the door, not looking back, feeling his eyes on her as she walks away.

 

II.

Two steps in the door, and Sarah knows something’s wrong.

The place they’ve been staying in isn’t huge; one big room in the front and a tiny kitchen tucked to the side, with a narrow hallway leading to the only bedroom. They’d been keeping the baby in the room with them, bouncing him on their knees and taking turns walking him around the apartment until he calmed down enough to sleep. It’s unusual not for being quiet — Conrad could get little Mikey rocked to sleep better than anyone else — but it’s so _dark._

Conrad always left the light on for her, even if she was gone all night. Said he knew how disorienting it was to walk into a just-lit room, that it was better for her if the place looked lived-in, felt alive, and secretly Sarah had always been surprised and grateful that he knew her so well.

Now, though, the room is dark, even when Sarah blindly feels for the plug of the lamp and shoves it in. The power could’ve hiccuped. The bulb could’ve burned out. Conrad could’ve gone out for a walk or to check on their neighbor or a dozen other perfectly reasonable explanations.

“Connie?”

Her voice is hoarse, run ragged from the job she just came back from (running some poor fool down to the bone before killing him — not her favorite type of gig, these torture-type things, but baby’s gotta eat and mama’s gotta make a living). No echo, no answering call from her boys, and Sarah can’t suppress a shiver.

_Not good._

Moving quietly and giving her eyes a chance to adjust, Sarah moves forward slowly, pulling her gun out and gently clicking off the safety. There’s a flashlight in her bag, but she can’t make herself pull it out; something is very, very wrong, and she’s alarmed to find that she’s terrified to find out what it is.

_Living room and kitchen: clear._

She starts moving down the hallway toward the bedroom, gripping her gun tighter, bile already rising in her throat, breath coming fast and hard, because she _knows_ , she can feel that massive, terrible _something_ that’s lurking just around the corner — she’s been that something, she knows the whispers and scorched-acid smell and radioactive burn it leaves in the air afterwards —

And there it is.

Conrad’s sprawled out on the floor, their little boy cradled in his arms. Dead, both of them, and her throat goes tight and thick and suddenly she can’t breathe. She’s frozen, locked in place, the blood on the floor still pooling and oozing slightly toward her booted feet. Smeared on the walls, too, and in some buzzing part of her brain that she can’t turn off, that’s always looking for an escape route or a bargaining chip or anything she can use to her advantage, knows that’s not right.

Not normal.

A break-in gone bad wouldn’t look like this. So gruesome, so violent and angry. And they wouldn’t’ve...they wouldn’t have killed the baby. Her baby. Her and Connie’s kid, the miracle she never thought she’d discover, the best and most beautiful thing she and Connie ever made together.

She still can’t move, still can’t unlock her knees and touch the remains of the only family she’s ever loved, still can’t bend down or try to clean them up or make them look like anything close to peaceful and gentle or normal. She just stands there, gun dangling uselessly from her hand, blood rushing in her ears so loudly she can barely think.

 _Payback. From the Bunker Hill Crew, or maybe Shapiro’s boys._ They couldn’t beat her, couldn’t win in whatever approximated a fair fight, so they pulled this. Because of her.

Conrad never minded what she did for a living, and that more than anything made her fall so deeply in love she went all googly-eyed and stupid. Had a goddamn baby, like an idiot. Played house while her devastatingly handsome husband worked as an emergency doctor. Perfect little life, as long as everyone ignored that she was a gun for hire, as long as no one asked the most obvious question.

 _Should’ve known better_ , she thinks distantly, eyes sliding away from the bodies on the floor, from the ruin of the only two people who mattered. _Should’ve...should’ve done it different. Should’ve been smarter, harder._

_Should’ve left them when I had the chance. Should’ve saved them._

Sarah blinks, hard. Sarah steps back on trembling legs, backs into the wall so hard it rattles the picture frames next to her. Sarah holsters her gun and breathes out slowly, then turns her back on them, and walks brokenly, jerkily to the loose floorboard in the corner of the living room that stashes her emergency go-bag. Her Get Out Of Domestic Jail Free bag, that she hasn’t ever thought about using but couldn’t ever fully discard.

Clothes, money, two unregistered guns and food for two weeks. She can make do with that, can go deep enough underground that whoever did this will wonder where the hell she disappeared to. Get the info she needs, find out who just pulled off a major upset to a local merc. She grabs it, hoisting it over one shoulder, and takes one long, last look down the hallway.

She never meant for it to come to this, but then. No one ever does.

_Bye, kiddo. Bye Connie._

 

III.

Walking through the abandoned Vault is creepy as shit. Fully-made beds, untouched packets of coffee and bottles of whiskey, hundred-year old crosswords half filled in — Sarah shivers and tugs at the zipper of her jacket, resisting the urge to keep glancing around like a nervous rookie. She’s been on weird assignments before, has trudged through old graveyards filled with ferals and labs packed with the weirdest version of ‘science’ she could imagine, but this is different. This is lived-in, but preserved at exactly the moment of...evacuation? Desertion? Sarah’s not sure, but it’s making the skin on the back of her neck tingle.

She doesn’t know the details of what happened here — the Institute’s not big on supplementary info, preferring to keep every piece on the board carefully siloed away. Prevents cross-contamination, according to her latest update, and Sarah still laughs to herself when she thinks about it.

Information as a disease, as a contimate that will burrow into their brains and fuck up the delicate scaffolding that kept her and every other merc employed and quiet and carefully justifying everything to themselves. Rotting away from the inside, the only prevention as suppression.

Whatever. Sarah couldn’t care less. As long as the money’s good, she’ll be coming back for more.

A sudden creak, a loud snap, and the white-clad scientists that are tagging along with her jump and swivel their heads around, startled faces peering at her through the thick plastic faceplate. They’re in the cryo pod section now, walking down an endless line of sleeping, death-like faces, and even she’ll admit to feeling a little jumpy, a little freaked out by the sounds her cyborg-like body is making.

“It’s nothing,” Sarah says, slow and loud, fucking with them just a little. “My hip cracked.”

They stare at her, wide-eyed and painfully unnerved, and Sarah blows out an annoyed breath and gestures to her hip before walking quickly ahead, letting them trot behind her.

She probably shouldn’t be so cavalier, she thinks ruefully. Noises like that aren’t normal, no matter how eye-rollingly annoyed she gets with her little scientist pals for reacting like scared rodents everytime they hear a sound. It’s a sign — her body’s slowing down, breaking down, maybe. She’s gonna need to get tuned up again after this; it’s been a long time, and even now she can feel her skin and bones getting softer with age, turning to mush, nature getting more and more pissed at her refusal to follow the natural path of aging and death.

Sarah is so much older than she looks.

 _Just like these popsicle people._ She almost says it out loud, but then, even Institute loyalists can get funny about how much money has been poured into keeping her alive and healthy and strong enough to kill most people with her bare hands, into keeping a loaded gun at her hip at all times.

The scientists have pulled ahead of her now. They know where they’re going, know exactly which pod has the precious treasure hidden away inside, and when they stop in halfway down the last row and peer into the viewing window, Sarah’s lets them take the lead. She’s useless when it comes to this science-y crap. She’s just here for backup, to protect the asset and get everyone out alive.

Well. Almost everyone.

Showtime, she thinks grimly, and watches carefully as one of the scientists fiddle with the release panel. The pod opens, a cloud of frozen, ancient air pouring out of it, and Sarah sees for the first time what all the fuss is about.

A baby. A tiny, iced-over, cryogenically preserved baby, from Day 1 of the Big War, curled up tight in a small, dark-haired woman’s arms.

It’s...well, it’s incredible. A healthy, prewar baby, ripe for the picking.

The woman — the mom — is waking up too, her arms tightening around her child in an instinctive, chimp-brain jerk that tugs at a distant corner of Sarah’s heart. _Just give it up, lady,_ she wants to say. _Just give us the kid and you can go back to sleep. You’ll barely even miss it once it’s gone. Trust me._

But the woman's struggling, she’s babbling and dripping ice all over the floor, she’s _screaming_ and fighting and for a heartstopping moment the stupid scientist nearly slips in the puddle that’s forming around him. _He’s gonna drop it. He’s gonna grab it and drop it and hurt it, and then we’re so, so fucked._

Sarah points her gun, willing the woman to give it up and see reason.

“I’m only going to tell you once,” she says calmly, quietly. The woman’s desperate cries are bouncing off the walls, piercing Sarah’s ears with a painful scrape, and she clenches her jaw to keep from snarling.

The scientist tugs harder, and the woman starts to move, starts to climb out of the pod, shouting for her daughter and her wife, and Sarah before this can get even more out of hand than it already is, Sarah shoots.

Double tap, right in the chest. Done.

 _Fuck. Wasn’t supposed to damage the moms._ Sarah breathes out slowly and orders the scientist to grab the kid and get the hell out of here before anything else detonates. _Damnit._ Normally Sarah prides herself on getting the job done clean, no mess or loose ends, but this one won’t go toward her sterling record.

 _Ah well. Crack a few eggs, making omelettes, blah blah blah._ She’ll be able to write it off.

And anyway, she starts telling the pansy-ass scientist on their way out. The backup Mommy’s still nice and quiet, frozen in place, waiting in the wings just in case. 

 

IV.

Living in DC isn’t as bad as she’d thought. She’s got a nice set-up, little apartment in the stands, far enough away from the main square that she can head out under cover of night for the jobs. Her salary has been insane, the best she’s ever gotten, and even if it comes with disconcerting, flash-of-light Courser-Check-ins, it’s still miles better than renting out a flea-ridden mattress in Goodneighbor three times a month.

And Samantha. Sam. Her little sidekick, five years old and chubby cheeked, sleeping peacefully while Sarah pages through a mystery novel and watches the girl's even, slow breathing.

Not her daughter. Her ward. That’s the line she’s been giving people, Sam included. Best not to confuse the kid right now; she’s got about five more years of this before little Samantha will get shipped off to the Institute to fulfill her purpose, and Sarah would prefer to avoid a tearful goodbye if possible. This cozy little family is only temporary, and Sarah’s been trying her damndest to get that through the kid’s head, but…Five year olds. Cognitive powers, not exactly their strong suit yet.

It’ll be a bloodbath when they grab her, unless Sarah can get Sam to understand what’s going on ( _Brainwash her, you mean,_ her mother’s guilty voice in her head, whispering from beyond the grave again. _Unless you can brainwash that little girl into accepting a bargain she’s not equipped to make_ ).

 _Well, that’s cheerful, Mom,_ Sarah thinks with a mental shrug, finally able to let go slightly of the anger, the rage she felt for her mother. Sarah understands now how hard it must’ve been for her, how much she sacrificed and how little she got from it, how one-sided the exchange truly was when she married Sarah’s father and lost everything in the roar of their doomed, explosive love.

 _Mom would probably get a kick out of this,_ Sarah thinks, cracking open another beer while Sam mumbles drowsily in her little bed. Sarah ran away as fast and far away from her parents as she could, all of New Vegas on converging on her with guns blazing, made a family and lost it just as quick, became the most feared merc in all the Commonwealth, and somehow she still ended up with a kid and an apartment in the most respectable city in town.

_Wherever you go, there you are. Can’t outrun history._

Sarah doesn’t mind that much — throwing Mom a bone at the end here wouldn’t be the worst thing. She’s not big on ego these days, has lived long enough to realize that the solution to every problem changes the minute you find it, that no one’s ever really wrong and no one’s right either. There’s a whole ocean inside every person, and death is the one thing that’s the same no matter who you are.

It’s not so bad, to honor the dead; even the pathetic dead, even the sad, huddled dead. It’s no skin off her nose.

Leaning over, careful not to knock the fragile lamp off the table, Sarah fiddles with the radio, tuning it back to the classical station. The static crackles for a moment before a smooth, golden wash of music fills the room. Something with strings, rich and mellow, and Sarah relaxes a little more into her chair, glancing over to check that Sam’s still sleeping soundly.

She’s got some work to do tomorrow. Sam’s about old enough to start going to that school on the other side of town, which should free Sarah up for some longer-term jobs. It’s not too hard to get a babysitter for one night, but with any luck Sam’ll make a few friends and Sarah can pawn her off on them if she needs to be out for multiple days. Kids that age are desperate to spend time with their friends, and before long Sarah bets she’ll have trouble keeping Sam in the house at all.

 _God she’s growing up fast,_ Sarah can’t help thinking, and laughs a little to herself at how obvious, how painfully traditional she sounds.

Taking another long, slow sip of beer, Sarah closes the book and sets it aside. It’s both strange and not-strange, to have this child with her, and Sarah slams the door on that so fast she squeezes her eyes shut, as if that would alone could help keep the memories at bay.

 _Stay in the moment. Stay in the present._ When Sarah thinks too much about the past, about how long she’s been a live and how much longer she’ll be alive still, it makes her teeth itch and pulse, makes her eyes water and sting. She could drown in everything she’s already lost, everything she’ll lose in the future too, if she’s not careful. She’s got to keep the balance, keep it all in perfect, crystal-clear perspective.

This little interlude won’t last forever, sweet as it is. It’s already ending; it’s already gone. 

 

V.

As Sarah watches Anne fight her way through the labyrinthine layout of Fort Hagen, dodging traps and sliding Stimpacks into her broken arm with a grim-set mouth and taking careful aim for the weak spots in the synths hiding behind every corner, she can’t help but be impressed. Fort Hagen isn’t some slapdash raider settlement, held together with barbed wire and wonderglue and protected by tacky heads-on-spikes. Fort Hagen is serious, Fort Hagen is pre-war solid and armed to the teeth. Fort Hagen doesn’t let just anyone bust inside and start tearing the place apart.

And yet. Here she is, the leftover Vaultie, methodically working her way to the command center, taking exactly zero shit from Sarah no matter how much she tries needling her. Sarah kinda likes her, as strange as that feels. Likes her tenacity, her stubborn refusal to quit; maybe even sees herself in her, just a bit.

If Sarah’s baby had been taken and not killed, would she have burned the whole world to the ground to get him back?

_Probably. Maybe?_

The woman who held her son with Conrad is so far away now Sarah barely remembers her.

But she likes to think so. She likes to think that she would’ve been like Anne, that she would’ve done whatever it took to collect the pieces of her shattered life. Right now, Anne’s trying to fix what broke by sheer willpower alone, by holding everything in her hands and fusing it back together again.

It won’t work, of course. Anne has no idea how late she is to the party, has no idea what’s become of her little girl, of what’s waiting for her if she actually finds Samantha: Institute Mother, Genius Scientist and rumored Witch of the Wasteland.

Sarah loved her, once. Loved how bright Samantha was, loved the care in which she played with the other children, loved how she’d rest her little-kid back against Sarah’s legs when she was tired. Sarah loved her in a way Anne never could, never will.

Still likes her quite a bit — her not-daughter makes a pretty good boss, lets Sarah take the jobs she wants and mostly stays out of her way. They check in with each other every now and then, play a game of checkers when they both get a moment to relax, Sam still stiffly refusing a beer and holding back a smile when Sarah teases her for it.

Sam’s whole life, the whole life Anne will never know, and it’s only now occurring to Sarah how much she took from Anne.

Not everything though, Sarah thinks, watching Anne creep down the hallway that’s close, that’s very close to where she is now. Anne’s squint, that chin and mouth just like Samantha — no one could ever take that away from her. Probably there’s more in there from the dead one, the other mother that Sarah shot twice in the heart. Surely some part of Anne’s wife still lives in Sam.

Maybe that will be enough, but Sarah doubts it.

Closer now. Closer and closer, out of sight from the cameras. Sarah signals to her Gen-2 units, getting them into position. She’s going to try a surrender, just like Samantha requested, but she doesn’t have her hopes up. Sarah’s pretty sure there’s only one way for this to go down, with Anne dead and Sarah feeling uncomfortable but mostly fine at having to report that, a hundred years apart, she killed both of Samantha’s parents.

She never meant to. This whole thing — getting Sam, raising her, letting Anne loose on the unsuspecting Commonwealth — warped and changed and twisted into a new shape every time she touched it. What started as a one-time job became her life; and then that turned to smoke under her fingers just like everything else, blowing away in the wind like it never happened.

Sarah’s never been very good at holding on to things.

The grating sound of a lock being forced open, steady, heavy footfalls outside the door. _Showtime._ Sarah shoves her gun in the waistband of her pants, tucks her spare in her shoulder holster. It’s dark in the room — the dramatics of the lights going on, the sudden blinding light, it all works in her favor, and Sarah’s known all her life to use every tool in your toolbelt.

The door opens, and Sarah comes out with her hands up, walking slowly forward, letting the glowing eyes of the synths take Anne's attention first. Starts to open her mouth, to give this woman the best gift Sarah and Sam could possibly give her — Sam wants her alive, of course. Sam wants to meet her parent, would never have defrosted her if she didn’t, but she wants it all on her terms. Samantha keeps her cards close to the chest, even with her.

Before she can do more than draw breath, though, she sees her, and her mouth goes dry.

The Sole Survivor. The Spare Mommy. Standing in the doorway in Brotherhood black, dark blonde hair pinned back and old-lady glasses perched on her nose, taller and stronger than Sarah ever noticed in the grainy security footage, with a Fat Man hoisted over her shoulder.

Sarah gets a glimpse, just the briefest glimpse, of Anne’s grey eyes shining with something Sarah can’t name before a bright nuclear flash lights up the room and burns everything away.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [tumblr](http://tinwomanrunaway.tumblr.com/), come swing by and say hi!


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